Chapter 1 #2
“So, what do you want?” I ask. “Scare him? Buy him through his wife? Set fire to his car and make it look random?”
Baron’s eyes harden. “No.”
I notice. “No?” I echo. “You saying that to me feels unnatural. Should I call a doctor?”
Vadim pinches the bridge of his nose. “For fuck’s sake.”
Baron doesn’t react. “I want him watched. Mapped. Pressures identified. Patterns confirmed. If he is what he appears to be, we adapt. If he is lying, we find the lie.”
“So, you want surveillance.”
“I want certainty.”
I roll the glass between my palms. “That sounds suspiciously like a job for people who enjoy paperwork.”
“It’s a job for family,” Baron says. “Which is why you’re going to handle it.”
I bark out a laugh. “Me?”
“Yes.”
“No. Absolutely not. You don’t send me after an honest detective if the goal is subtlety. I am many things. Subtle is not one of them.”
“That is exactly why nobody will expect you to do it properly,” Baron says.
I stare at him. “That is the most insulting compliment I’ve ever had.”
“Take it and move on.”
I drink instead, buying half a second to think. I hate this already. Surveillance is waiting. Waiting is boredom. Boredom leads me to start cutting into people just to see how much they bleed.
“Fuck no,” I say, because I want there to be no confusion.
Baron lifts one brow. “And yet.”
Vadim’s silence gets smug. Bastard thinks this is funny because it isn’t his problem. His day will come, and when it does, I will be there.
“You want me to what? Follow this Mercer prick about while he buys organic yoghurt and drives to Surrey? That is not in my skill set. My skill set is ending bloodlines and making examples.”
“Your skill set,” Baron says coolly, “includes intelligence, no matter how determined you are to pretend otherwise.”
I sit with that for a second, irritated that he’s right and more irritated that he said it out loud. Triple irritated that Vadim heard it and is pretending not to.
“I can do intelligence,” I say carefully. “I just hate it.”
“Good. Hate it quietly.” Baron reaches to the low table beside him and slides a slim black folder across the polished surface. It stops right in front of me like a bad omen.
I stare at it. “You know what this looks like.”
Baron says nothing.
“It looks like punishment.”
“It is work.”
“Same thing in this family.”
“Open it, Lev. My patience is razor-thin.”
I flip the folder open without further complaint.
Standard briefing. Passport-style photo clipped to the first page.
Nathaniel Mercer looks exactly how I expected and somehow worse for it.
Mid-forties. Neat hair. Square jaw. The expression of a man who probably says things like ‘let’s do this by the book’ and means it.
Suit off the peg. Tie straight. Eyes serious.
No vice written on him anywhere. I already want to punch him.
He probably fucks missionary with the lights off.
I skim the next page. Service record. Transfers. Commendations. Anti-corruption unit liaison six years ago. Fucking hell. That explains the halo.
“He’s a proper one,” I say.
“Yes,” Baron says.
“And nobody has tried to ruin him yet?”
“Apparently not successfully.”
I keep reading. Wife, Eleanor. Two children.
Boy, ten. Girl, seven. Address in Surrey.
Gym twice a week. Same coffee shop near Vauxhall every morning before work.
Commutes by train three days a week, drives the others.
No known affairs. No gambling. No unexplained cash movement.
No drinking problem. No hookers. No dead side piece buried in Epping Forest. Bank records clean and modest. Mortgage paid every month on time. Very disappointing.
“This man is offensively clean.”
“That is why he concerns me,” Baron says. “Sort it out.”
He sits back, and that is the end of this conversation.
I should probably clarify what ‘sort it out’ means to him because I’m pretty sure killing Mercer isn’t the route he wants to go.
That means one thing. This is intelligence, and I’m stuck finding it.
Finding that one teeny-tiny thing he did wrong thirty years ago, then leaning on him until he breaks. In a corporate, boring way, of course.
“Fine,” I say and rise. “Time scale?”
“Soon,” Baron says and leaves it at that.
“Great,” I say and leave as Vadim sits down, apparently on a social call now.
Good for him.
Gripping the file, I move back into the club and slice through the crowd towards the front doors.
I’m halfway to the door when she cuts across my path with a tray balanced on one hand and a look on her face that says she would happily poison every man in this room if the cameras were off.
Up close, she’s even more fucking dangerous for my peace of mind.
Her dark hair is pinned back too tightly, as if she doesn’t trust a single strand to behave.
Wide green eyes full of pure irritation.
Full lips painted a muted red that makes my thoughts turn filthy at once.
White shirt fitted to her body, black pencil skirt, black heels, and a tiny gold name badge pinned above her left breast.
Varvara.
Even her name slams you in the dick and makes it act of its own free will.
She glares at me and moves on, while I stand there unable to move for half a second.
The brush off isn’t usual, but then she isn’t a usual woman.
Unfortunately for her, all she has done is intrigue me to the point that I now need to stalk her to find out everything about her.